EVENTS

A million gods

I am Avicenna (named after the islamic golden age Doctor) and I am terrifyingly weird and am a giant nerd. I am a british indian medical student doing my clinical rotations in India. I basically qualify in a year and a bit and then I plan to continue to work for charity here before I go back home and have a career. However to keep sane I started blogging. And it kind of got out of hand…

I am (naturally) an Atheist (otherwise me joining here would probably win the “biggest misunderstanding” award) but Hinduism is the religion I don’t believe in. All my old gods are crazy as fuck. Good for stories or inspiration for metal bands but not so good for normal life.

Comments

Glad to get some polytheist influenced perspectives here. Especially since, as a person from a monotheistic culture I sometimes think that polytheism seems a bit more rational. Many gods with competing agendas seem easier to reconcile with reality than one, perfect, all powerful and and loving god.

Heh, I was raised within Hinduism as well (in addition to some Islam). I do find much of Hinduism more logically possible/i> (which is distinct from empirically supported; nearly all religions are empirically unsupported, including Hinduism) than Abrahamic religions because it doesn’t really have the theodicy problem, or a lot of other problems that come from believing in one omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent god.

I also find it easier to get out of, both physically and mentally, than most religions. Just my personal observation, but I had no trouble deciding I was an atheist, telling my family that (they were basically like “…oh.”), and living my life as a nonbeliever without guilt or shame. I know ex-Christians and ex-Muslims, and most of them have strong family opposition, or strong internal compunctions about leaving the faith, or both. (Though I grew up in the West, not in South Asia–I doubt it’s the same over there).

“Easy to get out of” is a pretty important virtue for religions, if they’re to exist at all.

Actually most Hindus have the same problems with theodicy and so on, because they are monists. That means they believe all the different gods and goddesses are manifestations of the One Brahman (like the Christian trinity on speed). Which means it makes no sense for individual gods to have conflicting agendas. That would be like God’s left hand fighting his right.

Winterwind: and yet, they often do, in Hindu myths and legends and scriptures, have conflicting agendas. The monistic god of Hinduism isn’t like the loving, protective, personal, unified god of Christianity. It is in fact possible for a monistic god’s left hand to fight his right. (This fact becomes super-obvious since Hinduism says people are also manifestations of god–and obviously people conflict with each other).

Also the personal religious experience of most Hindus I’ve known is polytheistic. They may theoretically believe that it’s all one god, but their prayers are generally to an individual god.